OEE in different manufacturing settings

• Adaptation of OEE across various manufacturing environments.
• Case studies.

Thanks for joining lesson 11 of this mastering OEE course where we take a look at OEE in different manufacturing settings. 

We’ll first briefly discuss OEE benchmarks before showcasing a couple of case studies depicting OEE in different manufacturing settings.

Let’s dig in.

OEE benchmarks

In reality, it's impossible for any process to reach 100% OEE, aka "perfect production".

Here’s a quick rundown of why:

100% Availability is only possible if equipment is always running during the planned production time, meaning no delays in shifts, perfect availability of raw material, no stop causes, etc.

100% Performance would mean equipment is always running at the theoretical maximum speed, known as Ideal Cycle Time.

100% Quality is the same as achieving zero production of defective goods. Every single piece produced must be perfect.

So what are some more realistic numbers manufacturers strive for when optimizing OEE?

Manufacturers typically aim for a range of 80-95% OEE, a score that is seen as excellent, but this can vary greatly depending on the industry.

Typically, an OEE score of around 60% is seen as good but has room for improvement.

While it is important to strive for the highest possible OEE score, it's also crucial to consider realistic production capacity and avoid overestimating potential.

Which OEE metric should I track?

With effectively four OEE metrics available in Factbird, which are TCU, OEE3, OEE2, and OEE1, we often get the question about which one is most important.

So of course, the general answer is they're all important in their own way. But when using Factbird solution, early on, we really want you to focus on OEE1 and OEE2. OEE1 for obvious reasons. That loss during operation is very important to address.

But OEE2 is an interesting one where most of the manufacturers using Factbird find that they gain a lot of benefit by addressing, and that's usually surrounding changeovers and cleanings. So they'll usually have an SLA 30 minutes for this changeover or 30 minutes for this cleaning.

And they're just going by gut feeling, usually that they are hitting that 30 minute mark. But what we find over and over again, regardless of industry, is that they're losing a lot of time in changeovers and cleaning. So with Factbird solution, they end up getting a lot of time back by focusing on OEE2.

OEE case study: Broxburn Bottlers

Broxburn Bottlers, one of the top bottling providers in the UK, struggled with unreliable downtime data and a lack of production insights. 

They decided to try Factbird in 2022, and it transformed how they track production and address issues in real time.

They are a good example of how different roles in an organization benefit from OEE.

The Operations Director saw a clear impact: one production line improved from 65.8% efficiency to 77.8% in under a year using insights from Factbird—a huge step forward.

The Production Team Leader uses OEE daily to track stops, efficiency, and batch progress, making their work more streamlined and efficient.

For the Electrical Engineer, OEE metrics showed exactly where systems and procedures needed improvement to boost machine performance.

And for the Line Supervisor, real-time dashboards and analytics are invaluable. They rely on OEE to monitor progress hour by hour and bring insights to team discussions.

As you can see, OEE delivers value across the organization, tailored to each role’s priorities.

“For line 3 in 2022, we were sitting at an efficiency of 65.8%. After Factbird going in and us made the improvements that the system helped us identify, we've got a 12% increase. We're sitting at circa 77.8% year to date in 2023 up to the end of August. A step change in performance.”

Operations Director

“I can see everything that I need to see with Factbird, which is great. I check registered stops, the line efficiency, and batches is also a handy one for me; it helps to see when they're going to finish. I look at the OEE as well as downtime.”

Production Senior Team Leader

“Seeing the OEE of a system. That allowed us to also see what we needed to do to improve our systems and our procedures to allow them to get better performance out of the machines.”

Electrical Engineer

“I use the live time (dashboard). We time when certain products are gonna finish, when they’re gonna start. We use analytics; we can pinpoint when we have issues and bring them up at team meetings. And I use the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness Metrics) a lot, on an hour-to-hour basis.”

Line Supervisor

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If you wish to know more, you can read their case study, which depicts the value of automatic tracking to capture microstops. This is a great lesson on finding microstops and the roll of OEE in improvement.

OEE case study: Raymundos

Now let’s take a look at another case study, this time Raymundos in the US.

Raymundos are known for their ready-to-eat desserts. We visited their team in Bedford Park, IL, to learn how they leveraged Factbird to achieve major cost savings and boost output. 

Roberto Marquez, Plant Manager, shared insights on tackling challenges with Factbird’s Manufacturing Intelligence solutions.

They had the typical problem of manual data collection leading to poor visibility into what was going on in production.

Facing rising raw material costs, labor shortages, supply chain challenges, and increasing competition, Raymundos recognized the need for Industry 4.0 solutions. By digitalizing their data collection with Factbird, they aimed to maximize the value of their equipment and stay ahead.

You can check out their case study. It's a great example of going from manual production monitoring to using real-time collection of data. And that 20 point jump in OEE is quite impressive.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed stepping back and looking at how OEE is used in reality.

If you would like to see more case studies on Factbird and OEE analysis, jump to our case study page at factbird.com/case-studies.

And that’s it for this lesson!

See you in the next lesson where we discuss how to improve OEE.